The industrial sector is facing a new set of challenges when it comes to securing a converged IT-OT (information technology/operational technology) environment. We’ve seen these growing pains come to light over the past several months in the form of the Solarwinds incident, and through continued attacks on critical infrastructure, including major pipeline operators, food distributors, water and power supply.
In the past, cyber security was focused on IT assets like servers and workstations, but the increased connectivity of systems requires that industrial security professionals expand their understanding of what’s in their environment. Bottom line – you can’t protect what you don’t know about. Not to mention, the increase in large-scale ransomware attacks has proven that IT events often impact OT systems, which can result in significant downtime and have grave financial implications for operators.
The attacks we’ve seen on both critical infrastructure...